Category: Plan / Shoot / Edit

It seemed only right to do a composite image of Sophie with our first copy of the magazine to celebrate the release! There is no better smell than the one of boxes that have just come from the printers filled with perfect unopened books…it’s heavenly!

I met Vivien Jones; Founder & Editor of Kookie Magazine, on delivery day when the mountains of KOOKIE boxes arrived and was so excited to get my copy. I knew as soon as i looked at it that i had to incorporate it into a composite to advertise the magazine on social media. Viv is also hosting a KOOKIE launch party this coming saturday (In 2 Days time) for all the contributors and i wanted to take her a gift so my idea of the composite to celebrate is going to be framed and given to her then……..so as always with any ideas i seem to come up with i had to do it fast so that i could get it edited and off to print!

This was my timescale:

Received my magazine copy: Tuesday evening

Came up with the idea for a Composite print as a gift: Wednesday morning

Last minute ideas are always the most fun, it really gets my adrenaline pumping and i work so much better…..pressure is good!

I won’t breakdown the Composite process in as much detail as previously in my 7 Days 7 Composites Challenge because i didn’t use any new methods but i will just show a brief outline of the different components.

I would like to show this though:

This is the glamorous studio of my bedroom floor! There was no time to travel to my studio with Sophie because it was already getting late because we were out at Sophie’s Christmas play at church till 7pm so i had to improvise!

Equipment used:

Nikon D750 & Nikon 85mm 1.8 Lens for the full shot of the magazine (85mm so that it didn’t distort the shape of the magazine)

Nikon D750 & Nikon 35mm 1.4 Lens for the stars (because i had to be really close to them while i was throwing them) and for Sophie because my bedroom is really small and i needed to use the wide angle lens to fit her whole body in the frame.

Yongnuo Flash bounced straight up off my white ceiling for all shots.

First i photographed the magazine and then i sat and threw stars around with my left hand whilst trying to take pictures of them with my right hand (if only i’d had my tripod and trigger!! ha)

I then photographed Sophie wearing the same clothes as she wore on the Cover Shoot on the same white sheet:

I then put the kids to bed and set to editing …. only to find that all the shots i had taken of Sophie standing just wouldn’t fit right with the magazine…. the perspective was off which you can see here:

I always cut around my subject really quickly at first with the ERASER tool just so that i can test the perspective of them when i place them onto the background, it’s a good indication to how i need to change my angle of the shot if its wrong. If the perspective is right i will then cut out the subject properly using more fine tools like the LASSO and then refine the edge.

I should of taken the photos of Sophie from a slightly lower angle…… unfortunately by this point she is fast asleep in bed and totally wouldn’t appreciate being woken up and dragged into my bedroom to throw imaginary stars around! So i had to make do with what i already had and decided to use one of the jumping shots because the perspective of this isn’t as important with her feet off the floor:

This ended up working quite well and arranged more of the stars that i had shot separately around her as if she had thrown them in the air when she jumped. I also removed the original background and painted a new background that was the same colour of Sophie’s face on the magazine. There was quite a lot of tweaking to get the shadows right and lots of CURVES & LEVELS layers to balance out the image but i got it to a point i was happy with (….and had no choice because i had run out of time anyway and had to send it off to print).

The image above is the one i sent off to print and will be framed and given to Viv as a present for the launch of her new Global Magazine KOOKIE on saturday!

I also put this together for the social media advertising:

This is a screenshot from the KOOKIE SHOP where you can buy the magazine in the UK & AUSTRALIA: